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Chloroform

A thin, colorless liquid, of agreeable ethereal odor, and sweetish but slightly acrid taste. Its specific gravity (water standard) is 1.49, and the specific gravity of its vapor (air standard) is 4.2. It kindles with difficulty, burning with a green-

Dr. Stonelen proposes a test for the presence ish flame, and gives a dull, smoky-yellow of salicine in sulphate of quinine. He em- color to the flame of alcohol. It occupies a ploys three kinds of sulphuric acid-viz.: the prominent place among the anæsthetics (subfuming, pure concentrated acid, free from stances used to produce insensibility to pain arsenic and nitric acid; ordinary concentrated by inhaling them), but has in later times. sulphuric acid of commerce, containing a been, to a certain extent, superseded by trace of nitric acid; and, lastly, sulphuric nitrous oxide. (See No. 4060.) Externally acid, to which, purposely, nitric acid had been applied, it is refrigerant, soothing, and allays added. Watch glasses having been placed on pain. It neither reddens nor bleaches litmus a sheet of white paper, and a drop or two of paper. the acids above referred to (each in a separate 4272. Το Obtain Chloroform. This is glass) having been poured therein, a few crys- prepared on the large scale, by mixing, in a tals of sulphate of quinine are put on the capacious retort or still, 4 pounds chloride of acid; if pure, there is no coloration; but, even lime, 12 pounds water, and 12 fluid ounces rectified alcohol; distill cautiously as long as plete. On cooling, the liquid in the retort a dense liquid is produced, which sinks in and solidifies, forming a crystalline mass of hydraseparates from the water with which it passes ted chloral. This must be melted by gentle over. Separate the lower stratum of chloro- heat, and agitated with thrice its volume of form from the water, agitate it with a little oil of vitriol, when, on increasing the heat a sulphuric acid, and distill it by the heat of little, an oily stratum of impure chloral will a water-bath from carbonate of baryta. rise to the surface. This must be removed, (Dumas.) hydrochloric acid and alcohol, and next disboiled for some time, to drive off some free tilled with an equal volume of oil of vitriol; lastly, it must be rectified from finely-powdered quicklime, stopping the process as soon as the surface of the lime becomes dry. The